why do people think this game will be like TES?

[H3rmit]

People keep comparing this game to the elder scrolls for some reason. My question is why? We don't know anything about it yet other than it is a fantasy RPG. Am I missing something?

[Adridactelo]

First, because Obsidian has been pretty open about their desire of making a Skyrim-like game on POE's universe:

Obsidian CEO: “I’d love to turn Eternity into more like a Skyrim product”

Then Chris Avellone said on Codex that after the Microsoft purchase Chris Parker could finally make his "shallow take" on Skyrim:
 

Spoiler

 

 

Finally, several job offers suggested that Obsidian's new game would be an open-world, with day-night cycles and an emphasis on first person melee combat.
 

 

[Theonlygarby]

Avellone seems like such a b I t c h

Dude seems angry at everyone.  Any time I hear a statement from him, it's so whiney and putting other people down.

[Wormerine]

There is nothing in Avowed trailer which would indicate what game it really is true. Most specilation comes from earlier mentioned knowledge that Skyrim-like in Eora (and whatever that exactly might mean) was something thrown around for quite a while. Also leaks previous to Avowed announcement suggested a Skyrim-like fantasy project. 

But yes, it is not clear how much "Skyrim-like" will Avowed be. 

[Guest]

I vaguely remember the first time that Skyrim gameplay was shown. It may be a coincidence that it looks incredibly similar, but it also may have been intentional.  Skyrim has made Bethesda a ton of money. I can't blame Obsidian for looking to cash in on that fan base.

*cough* especially if they can land the writing part *cough*

EDIT: this isn't that, but still:

Edited August 5, 2020 by Achilles

[H3rmit]

1 hour ago, Achilles said:

I vaguely remember the first time that Skyrim gameplay was shown. It may be a coincidence that it looks incredibly similar, but it also may have been intentional.  Skyrim has made Bethesda a ton of money. I can't blame Obsidian for looking to cash in on that fan base.

*cough* especially if they can land the writing part *cough*

EDIT: this isn't that, but still:

it does look like thats what they were going for in the trailer but i dont want to get too excited haha ill wait till i see some game play. im kinda disapoited that its only first person. granted that thats how i played in skyrim but i liked looking at how badass i looked every now and then.

[ComradeYellow]

21 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

Avellone seems like such a b I t c h

Dude seems angry at everyone.  Any time I hear a statement from him, it's so whiney and putting other people down.

Good riddance.  I'll take more Tim Cain's and Leonard Boyarsky's anyday. 

And why not make an alternative to Bethesda's offerings?  Some of us think that Elder Scrolls games are 50% awesome but 50% lackluster and who better than Obsidian to fill that gap?

[Wormerine]

16 hours ago, H3rmit said:

granted that thats how i played in skyrim but i liked looking at how badass i looked every now and then.

If Avowed will be FP only, as currently advertised, it is possible it will still allow to view your character model like in Outer Worlds. 

[ZyroMane]

On 8/5/2020 at 10:42 AM, Theonlygarby said:

Avellone seems like such a b I t c h

Dude seems angry at everyone.  Any time I hear a statement from him, it's so whiney and putting other people down.

MCA is obviously the definition of disgruntled former employee. However, whether or not Mr. Slam Dunk embezzled funds into the coffers of his relatives, he almost certainly mismanaged the company so bad for them to always be in the gutter when that was not true about other independent developers. Sure, still not Pitchford, but still. (Eh, everyone hates their boss.)

TOW was a personal disappointment, but I was dreaming of an AP or DS3 after MMOs, RTwP Iso games, and that digital card game. That's on me. Grounded might be more my scene, If I was into survival games (read: the demo was fun.) I'm probably just setting myself up for further disappointment, but, while I don't think Skyrim is a great game (Daggerfall is my favorite Elder Scrolls,) I still had fun, and I'm hoping for some fun from Avowed. Not ever going to be Swordflight, but some nice dungeon design would be great. First-person orlan gameplay, with appropriate mechanical differences, would be a ten out of ten from me though.

[Anthonyrex]

I'd hate for this to be another Skyrim. Just about every RPG out there nowdays tries to be an open-world sandbox, and most of the time that comes at the cost of story and character development, which has always been Obsidian's strength. I hope they put the story first, and the open world will be just the background, and not the main feature, the way that it is in TES.

[Pidesco]

Well, that would be the point, really. Having Obsidian design an open world fantasy RPG that doesn't jettison every other system and all semblance of game design, for the sake of the open world.

Getting combat akin to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, for instance, would be a good start.

 

Also, I thought Skyrim was already the shallow version of Skyrim.

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, Pidesco said:

Getting combat akin to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, for isntance, would be a good start.

When the leak mentioned magic with physics system, all I could think of was:

 

[Wormerine]

3 hours ago, Anthonyrex said:

I'd hate for this to be another Skyrim.

Obsidian has already done New Vegas, and it didn't follow Bethesda design. I have no doubt that no matter how Skyrim-like Avowed will be, it will still be an Obsidian game first. 

I don't think most people think of games in terms of presentation rather then content or structure. People called Witcher a Skyrim killer, and the two have barely anything in common... aside from being open world, which can be utilized in myriads of ways. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

It's an open world game designed around first person view and the end of the trailer emulates Skyrim to the point it could be mistaken for a screenshot. It may have more complex mechanics and will almost certainly have a more complicated story than Skyrim, but comparisons and valid and probably something intended by Obsidian.

[ovelteen]

I'm sort of hoping that I won't have to play through the main quest every time I load a new game. In Skyrim I can ignore the main quest and any other quest line in the game and still have a blast. I have a prospector who is now level 51 who has never even spoken to the people in Riverwood about the dragon attack on Helgen.

 

I would also really like it if the npcs in the game were a little more reactive to the things going on around them, like when a companion is killed. Please don't just have them sit next to a dead body of a friend and just go on like the corpse isn't just rotting two feet away from them.

[H3rmit]

1 hour ago, ovelteen said:

I'm sort of hoping that I won't have to play through the main quest every time I load a new game. In Skyrim I can ignore the main quest and any other quest line in the game and still have a blast. I have a prospector who is now level 51 who has never even spoken to the people in Riverwood about the dragon attack on Helgen.

 

I would also really like it if the npcs in the game were a little more reactive to the things going on around them, like when a companion is killed. Please don't just have them sit next to a dead body of a friend and just go on like the corpse isn't just rotting two feet away from them.

i agree. you can slater an NPCs whole family and they will still talk to you as if nothing happened

[evilcat]

Because Skyrim is very succesful game?

Or that fantasy like action with rpg elements is always hit? LIke horizont zero dawn, Witcher, new Assasins even Outer World. General players just like action with nice story and rpg elements.

[MrAbidDin]

Obsidian should create a unique identity for this game. It should be deep both in terms of mechanics and narrative.

[Clawdius_Talonious]

There are aspects of Skyrim, and other Bethesda games, that work. There are aspects that do not work, at least for me.

Being able to start a game and head just about anywhere? Honestly, I could take or leave that aspect, I end up modding Skyrim to the point it no longer has such strict level scaling and I do use alternate start mods to add some variety. That said, it's more difficult to have a cohesive narrative experience when you're able to say "Nope, no dragons for me, thanks!" and go bum around stealing cheese wheels and mining ore.

I enjoy open worlds, but New Vegas' approach of "You can head north, but that's bat country" (cazadores, whatever.) works better for me. It lets me theoretically go anywhere I want, but has a path I am far more likely to take my first time through. Land masses routinely have natural obstacles that preclude venturing where ever the bloody hell you please. Unreal being what it is, I expect these to play a role preventing us wandering off in any given direction. Open world doesn't mean contiguous open world.

Bethesda doesn't really have sole ownership of first person RPGs, but most companies avoid first person because it's extremely difficult to make the combat feel impactful. Third person games feel somehow less clunky when you get to see a character model stagger, being staggered in first person is more frustrating and can feel unresponsive rather than like a legitimate mechanic. I'm curious to see what Obsidian manages, vis a vis solid feeling melee first person combat. I gather that some multiplayer games have done a good job lately, but I haven't experienced them myself. I do know that I found Kingdom Come's system to be unreliable and unintuitive. 

People compare it to Skyrim because it's the king of the FPSRPG hill, we called FPS games Doom-clones for longer than seems reasonable. FPSRPG isn't even exactly accurate if you can slip into third person. We need a catchy initialism, or better yet an acronym. Otherwise we'll just be calling games Skyrim-esque.

[Hurlshort]

Because it is catchier than Fallout with swords?

Because it is more current than calling it an Ultima Underworld clone?

[LadyCrimson]

Well, I'm late to this news party. Didn't know about this (I spend my time in the off-topic section these days...).

Watching the trailer almost gave me a tingle of excitement. Almost. 

I personally don't mind 1st person (although if it's party-oriented I do tend to prefer 3rd) - but I found most Elder Scrolls games to be too sterile feeling. But that doesn't mean I find the comparison a bad thing.  If Avowed ends up as a mixture of the things I did like about Elder Scrolls games (but less of things I didn't like) and combined with the things I tend to like Obsidian for, well ... it could be a home run.  We'll see.

[ComradeYellow]

What they should also do is steal Bethesda's composer, Jeremy Soule.

[StupidSeal]

Thought the reveal trailer looked cool. However we didn't get to see many details or much game play so it's hard to judge. 

[Flouride]

On 8/7/2020 at 2:22 AM, ZyroMane said:

MCA is obviously the definition of disgruntled former employee. However, whether or not Mr. Slam Dunk embezzled funds into the coffers of his relatives, he almost certainly mismanaged the company so bad for them to always be in the gutter when that was not true about other independent developers. Sure, still not Pitchford, but still. (Eh, everyone hates their boss.)

TOW was a personal disappointment, but I was dreaming of an AP or DS3 after MMOs, RTwP Iso games, and that digital card game. That's on me. Grounded might be more my scene, If I was into survival games (read: the demo was fun.) I'm probably just setting myself up for further disappointment, but, while I don't think Skyrim is a great game (Daggerfall is my favorite Elder Scrolls,) I still had fun, and I'm hoping for some fun from Avowed. Not ever going to be Swordflight, but some nice dungeon design would be great. First-person orlan gameplay, with appropriate mechanical differences, would be a ten out of ten from me though.

Umm, what? Haven't you checked out how many of the bigger/mid tier indie developers got either bought or just outright quit making games in the 2000s and 2010s? If anything Mr. Slam Dunk should be praised for his efforts in keeping the company up and running for such a long time. Had it not been for Kickstarter we might not have such companies as Double Fine, Larian, InXile and Obsidian left. For a while the playing field for indie developers was really bleak. At least for now there's GamePass and there's Epic that give these companies some options. But if you are trying to make AAA games, you are in a dire place as an indie. The costs are heavy and there aren't that many publishers handing out money.